A Week of Miracles

Dearest Family!

I have so much to write about! I hope I remember it all!

So I'm going to try to go chronologically, so we'll see how it goes.

First of all, this weeks was on bikes which was killer. It got pretty hot (although everyone laughed and told me to just wait), and I have never sweated so much in my life. It's a good thing that the gospel is true, because I'm sure we were a sight to see, bright red and literally dripping with sweat. I'm going to be in good shape this summer, though, and my quads are already looking nicer. :)

I am covered in scratches and bruises, though. I guess I'm failing at this bike thing. We haven't wrecked at all, and we wear helmets, but somehow my legs get attacked by the bike. I dunno how. One time we stopped to make sure we were going to the right address, and I propped my bike up on its kick-stand. Sister Hinckley accidentally knocked it over, and I think it was the peddle that landed on my foot. I dripped some blood around, but the cuts really aren't that bad. It was swollen for a few days, and the bruise is pretty big, but all is well. It really hasn't bothered me too much, and now the bruise is mainly at the base of my toes and on the outer edge of my foot. Oh, the adventures of riding a bike.

Then, we got a golden investigator last week! Her name is Jasmine and she is my age. It's complicated because she lives in our area, but she wants to attend the singles' ward, which is in another zone, but I think they will let us keep teaching her. She set a date and loves everything we have to say. She's eating up the Book of Mormon. What happened is that she and her mom know the Deshlers. He is the Area 70 here. The Deshlers invited them to the temple open house and Jasmine LOVED it. She's so perfect!! I'm just really happy for her. She's basically mormon already. And the fellowship has been great.

The other thing is that I finally met my mission goal! My whole mission I have wanted to get up to 10 lessons a week. That may sound low to you, especially after hearing about Willie's 20, but it was a miracle for me. When I was in the VC, we simply did not have time to teach that many lessons, unless we spent every minute in our area teaching (literally every minute), which is impossible as we all know. Then I got to Overland Park, which honestly was struggling as an area. It has a bad reputation as being a super hard area to find people to teach. But this week we did! And we taught 11 lessons so I met my goal! Next goal: 15 lessons a week. Here it goes!! Miracles!

We also got two new investigators that are super excited about Family History. It seemed to be the theme of the week.

Oh, and my District is awesome. These elders know how to be just friends with Sisters and not have it be too much or anything. They are super cool. Our District Leader, Elder Clair, really reminds me of Willie. Like SO MUCH. It kills me. I miss you Willie! I'm excited to talk next Sunday! The other day we didn't answer our phone for a few hours because we were on bikes, and we missed like 20 calls from him. He wondered if we died. He left us 5 voice mails (we do have 2 phones, by the way, so on both phones), and they were all pretty strange. One was of him singing a Tarzan song. So I really thought of Willie. All 4 of the elders in my district are chill. It's good.

Then on Saturday was the Cultural Celebration. We thought that we would be hanging out in the back until our part, but then they actually got us seats so we got to see the whole thing! We were in the nosebleeds, but it actually made it cool because then we could see the big picture. There were thousands of youth in the event. It was awesome. The theme was 'Of One Heart in the Heartland'. Each segment had a theme like "Shining Hearts" or "Sharing Hearts" or "Inspired Hearts".

Of course it had some cultural parts because there are large groups of polynesians and hispanics, so they did dances that were pretty cool. The most touching part was the youth from Joplin, Missouri, who are in the temple district. Their part was "Broken Hearts" and was about the devastation from the tornado. The floor was covered in debris and what looked like the frames of houses (this was in a basketball arena in downtown KCMO, by the way). The dancers stood around with their heads down while the big screen had images and narration about the destruction. They had a family of actors run together on the floor, as if they were being reunited after the tornado, happy to find each other alive. I cried. It was so beautiful. Then they showed the youth clean up the floor, bring blankets, supplies, and rebuild the homes while wearing helping hands T-shirts. Like I said, it was beautiful and full of hope. I loved it.

Our part was near the end. We were part of "Sharing Hearts". The youth sang parts of missionary primary songs. Then we all started singing "We'll Bring the World His Truth" which we started marching onto the floor, all 200+ missionaries, in ranks. We sang the first verse and the chorus twice. When we all were on the floor, we turned and sung toward the prophet (did I mention that Thomas S. Monson was there? He was). It was powerful. All of the youth on the floor knelt down, and everyone in the stadium stood up, including President Monson. I felt so honored to be there, singing for the prophet, representing the missionaries in all of the world. We sang our hearts out.

And then it was over so fast, and we marched right off of the floor again, and went back to our seats. Wow. It was so amazing. Our mission president and his wife just cried. They said that there were some camera men in the vans putting together the life video feed to broadcast it the stake centers, and they were so overwhelmed by the sight of all of the missionaries that they all cried and had difficulty doing their job because they were so touched by the sight of the missionaries.

What a place to be! I am so blessed! I can't believe that I got to be here for this!!! This is definitely something I will remember forever. President Keyes said he is getting all of the missionaries copies of the DVD recording of the celebration. I will get that in a couple of months. Yay!

Then yesterday was the dedication of the temple. There was no church, and they had three sessions in the stake centers. We went to the 9 am session, and got to see the cornerstone sealing (we were watching in the stake center). The dedication was amazing. President Monson was there, as well as Jeffry R. Holland, and Donald Hallstrom, and of course the temple presidency. It was really good. The sad thing was that there were technical difficulties with the broadcast, so we missed most of President Monson's remarks, and the first part of the prayer. Sister Hinckley really wanted to go back to another session, but we needed to be missionaries, so we didn't. Hopefully we can get a copy of the published dedicatory prayer and read it later.

Then when we got home, we had plans to be out all day yesterday on our bikes. We didn't have a dinner or anything. But things kept coming up. We had to do this one thing, then call all of these people, and then something else happened, and then we decided to just eat dinner before we headed out. It was kind of a stormy day, but we are missionaries rain and shine, so we planned on heading out. When we finally got everything together to go out, Sister Anderson (who we lived with) basically ran in and told us we couldn't go out. She had been taking a nap when she suddenly jolted awake and told her husband to turn on the TV. He did, and then they found out that Johnson county (here) was under tornado watch and we needed to head to the basement. So she ran and caught us right before we went out on our bikes in the rain.

So we spent our evening in their basement. We read scriptures and just kind of hung out. We tried to make some calls, but we didn't have reception down there. Then when the tornado watch ended, there was a severe lightning storm warning, so we still had to stay inside. She made us a yummy late snack, and we did some paperwork while watching the show. The storm was awesome. It rained about 4" in one day. Not like Utah.

And I really feel so protected. The Lord made sure that we weren't out in the storm. He worked a way so that we were safe. So parents, rest safe that the Lord is watching out for me. And so are the Andersons. :) It really was a blessing from heaven that we were inside last night.

So that was my week!

Love,
Sister Atkin